-Down to Earth Debt-ridden farmers have to either rent or buy the machines, which pose several threats to their next crop Hamir Singh, 53, who holds a 14-acre farm in Kalajhar village in Sangrur district of Punjab, had decided to toe the line, but didn’t work for him. He followed the ban on crop residue burning and tried using new technology like the rotavator, which has rotating blades that chop the straw...

-Livemint.com The production of ‘mahua’ is finally entering the formal economy as new initiatives seek to upscale this indigenous drink, selling it across the country and even the globe It is a cloudy morning in Nangur village in Bastar district, Chattisgarh. It is a settlement of a little over 400 families, considered fairly large in these parts. We make a bumpy journey down a narrow, unpaved road intermittently shaded by sargi (sal)...

-The Indian Express GD Agarwal lived and died to awaken the collective conscience for the Ganga. India lost her true Gangaputra, Swami Sanand, also known as Dr G D Agrawal, on October 11, the 112th day of his fast-unto-death seeking effective action from the Government of India for the conservation and protection of the Ganga. GD, as many affectionately addressed him, was a good and rare human being. Dressed in ordinary khadi,...

-Down to Earth Farmers struggle to decompose paddy straw in absence of adequate machines It is 11:30 am. A gypsy, with two loudspeakers mounted on it, takes a U-turn (on NH 7 at Chano) and enters Kalajhar village in Sangrur district of Punjab. As it enters, it starts announcing to the farmers in the village to gather at the outskirts and set the crop residue on fire. Such announcement is a sharp...

-The Indian Express Apart from the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the BJP is also counting on the Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (BBY), to neutralise rural anger ahead of the elections. Dewas, Ujjain: After the violent protests of June 2017 and unremunerative prices for most crops in the last one and a half years, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has one trump card — a Rs 5,000 crore-plus insurance payout...